Wikimedia Hungary Report
Vol 4 Issue 6
June 2011
Prepared by: Bence Damokos
This is an update on Wikimédia Magyarország's activities covering June 2011. The month was spent mostly on official and administrative tasks and in preparation for the WikiCamp event held in July 2011.
Presentations
- Two of our members participated in a conference held at the Károly Kisfaludy County Library in Győr (northwestern Hungary). The presentations were well received, a summary of the conference was published in a Hungarian journal for librarians, and we gave an interview to a regional radio station.
- The people behind the Sztakipedia project aimed at introducing intelligent automated suggestions into the editing workflow of Wikipedia (see demo at http://pedia.sztaki.hu/ and previous coverage in March) gave a presentation on the project and the ideas behind it for members of Wikimedia Hungary.
Grants
We have made some last minute progress on our outstanding grants from the Wikimedia Foundation.
- We bought a projector (NEC V300X) and after realizing that white wall space is not as ubiquitous as we though, a projection screen. The projector was used so far at our AGM and the July WikiCamp (see the next issue of this report), and will be used at further meetings and presentations. The relevant grant page is at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_HU/Projector
- We restocked our supplies of Wikimedia themed T-shirts, and also produced a score and ten shirts for our July WikiCamp event. This was supported by the following grant: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_HU/Promotional_Items .
- We received notice that our grant to support operational expenses has been approved by the National Civil Fund. (This is the same grant as reported in April, but the government deemed it necessary to review the grant giving agency's practices and decisions, which has lead to some delays.)
Fundraising
There were a number of events connected to fundraising in the month of June, even though it was not a very popular month for giving (Wikimedia Hungary didn't collect donations in Hungary in June, while the Wikimedia Foundation received $14.12 from donors in Hungary).
Bence participated in a Fundraising Seminar organized by the Foundation for Development of Democratic Rights and lead by Liam Cranley, former head of the ImpACT Coalition. Some quick notes taken at the seminar are available at http://internal.wikimedia.hu/w/images/7/72/Fundraising_kepzes.pdf.
The following week, Bence and Gergő participated in the Fundraising Summit held in Vienna. The main topics were the technicalities and processes of the 2011/2012 Wikimedia fundraiser. The evening sessions were especially useful for us to establish contact with the Viennese Wikipedia community and to start thinking about possible common meetings and projects.
Having returned from the summit, Wikimedia Hungary officially signed the fundraising agreement to participate in the 2011/2012 fundraising in partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation.
Annual General Meeting
On 25 June we held our Annual General Meeting in Budapest. A number of important decisions were taken at the meeting.
- Mónika Balogh was elected as our new treasurer, replacing Dániel Zrínyi, who has held the position since the inception of the chapter.
- A number of bylaw changes were agreed upon that will become effective once the Metropolitan Court of Budapest approves them (approval is pending as of August 2011). The chief changes are:
- The establishment of a 3-person Supervisory Committee to oversee the activities of the Board and the Association.
- The right to represent the Association was extended to the executive vice president (previously it was only the president who could represent the Association, which was occasionally a bottleneck).
- The financial report for the year 2010 was approved. The full report is at: http://wikimedia.hu/w/images/6/6d/K%C3%B6zhaszn%C3%BAs%C3%A1gi_jelent%C3%A9s_2010.pdf. The chief numbers for 2010 are:
- Total income: 11 118 000 HUF ($59 000)
- Main income sources: Donations (5.16 M HUF), Toolserver grant (4.3 M HUF), Wikimedia Foundation grants (1.06 M HUF), National Civil Fund grants (0.44 M HUF)
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Total expenses: 944 000 HUF ($5 000)
- Expense categories: Material expenses (29 k HUF), Personal expenses (travel, etc., 45 k HUF), Other expenses (includes programme costs and administrative costs like accounting, 683 k HUF), banking costs (187 k HUF)
- Result (income − expenses): 10 174 000 HUF ($54 000)
- Note: The majority of the income was received at the end of the fiscal year and a number of big expenses (the purchase of a toolserver and the remittance of the Wikimedia Foundation's share of the fundraiser) as well as expenses connected with our other grants have taken place in the 2011 financial year.
The minutes of the general meeting are available at: http://wikimedia.hu/w/images/b/b1/Jegyz%C5%91k%C3%B6nyv_2011._06._25.pdf.
Possible changes in our regulatory framework
The Government of Hungary has issued for comment a draft legislation on civil society. It is not yet known, when this law will become effective and what changes there might be between the bill and the final act; nevertheless, the draft contains a number of fundamental changes in the regulatory framework of Hungarian NGOs.
An important change is the way organizations would receive the tax deductible status called "organization of public benefit". Whereas, so far it was bestowed upon an organization based on their stated aims and goals in their bylaws, the new legislation requires that organizations prove every year that they have adequate resources and support from society.
To prove adequate resources, the organization has to have either a positive pre-tax result or an average yearly income above 1 million forints ($5000).
To prove adequate support, two of the following criteria have to be met:
- Donations make up at least 10 percent of the yearly income;
- Personal expenses (not counting the money spent on the officers of the organization) makes up at least 10 percent of all expenses;
- The support it receives from the government budget is less then 50% of the total income.